Court orders her to face charges, junta gives
her permission to go overseas
The
decision on July 17 by Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission to find
former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra guilty of negligence in connection
with the country’s ill-starred rice subsidy scheme looks like a choreographed
plan to drive her out of the country.
At
almost the same time, the junta granted permission for the 46-year-old former
Pheu Thai leader to travel overseas for the first time since the May 22 coup
led by Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha. Ostensibly she was given permission to
observe her brother Thaksin Shinawatra's 65th birthday in Europe.
She
will reportedly leave the country next week. She has said she will return,
according to press reports.
Thaksin
himself was deposed as prime minister in a royalist coup in 2006 and later fled
the country ahead of a prison sentence for abuse of power in helping his
then-wife buy government property at a reduced rate. He has continued to in
effect lead the country from his perch in Dubai through a series of elected
surrogate governments, the last one the Pheu Thai Party which came to power in
2011 with Yingluck at the head.
If
indeed Yingluck decides to stay abroad, it would fulfill a game plan outlined
by a Thai businessman last November, shortly after the Thaksin forces misplayed
their hand by introducing an ill-advised amnesty bill that would have
exonerated all sides for their part in a bloody crackdown in 2010 that took
more than 90 lives, most of them Red Shirt backers of the Thaksin forces. The
crackdown was so unpopular that when democracy was restored in 2011, the Pheu
Thai forces led by Yingluck won in a comparative landslide.
The
amnesty bill served as the fulcrum for anti-Thaksin opposition to mount months
of rallies and protests. Nonetheless, after Yingluck dissolved the parliament,
Pheu Thai handily won a subsequent snap election in February that was nullified
by the courts because the anti-Thaksin opposition boycotted the election.
Months of violence ensued, inspired by the elites and led by Suthep Thaugsuban,
a thuggish warlord whose power base is in the south of the country.
While
the anti-corruption commission insisted the ruling granting her leave to go
overseas had nothing to do with the decision to charge her, as Asia Sentinel
reported on June 30, it has been the aim of an amalgam of interests to drive
the Shinawatra clan out of the country and eliminate all traces of their power.
Thaksin still has substantial assets in the country that reportedly well exceed
US$1 billion. He would also like to regain another US$1 billion in assets
frozen after his conviction.
The
problem for the elites since the 2006 coup is that Thaksin is like the
Okiagari-kobōshi, the Japanese doll that, repeatedly knocked over, always pops
back upright. Despite the coup and court actions designed to stop him, his
populist policies gave him an unassailable working class base. They included a
comprehensive social welfare scheme for the long-ignored rural poor that
featured scholarships, welfare housing, health plans, insurance, company
incubators, a Bt1 million investment fund for individual villages and many
others, something no politician in Bangkok had ever done.
The
programs guaranteed him and his proxies overwhelming success at the ballot box
despite charges of massive corruption, cronyism, threats against the press and
pay-for-play bribe demands from corporations.
Although
Yingluck now faces prosecution for her role in the botched rice scheme, which
guaranteed rice farmers prices as much as 50 percent over world prices, it is
questionable what the sentence might be. Prayuth consulted with her frequently
during her stewardship of the country and he is said to like her personally and
would not like to see her jailed. Whether he advised her to leave the country
is unknown, but it seems logical.
Army
spokesman Col. Winthai Suvaree told reporters Thursday that Yingluck had
cooperated with the junta and had complied with an order to cease any political
activities. However, the junta has set the condition that Yingluck must return
to Thailand by August 10. If she doesn’t, her enemies will have made a major
step forward in driving the Shinawatras away.
But
that leaves unresolved the aspirations of the millions of Red Shirt followers
in the north and northeast of the country who benefited from the Thaksin
regime’s social programs. In Bangkok they are regarded as uneducated rabble
despite the fact that over the intervening 13 years since Thaksin started his
social programs, they have grown increasingly savvy and uncontrollable by
Bangkok.
The
country has remained largely quiet since the coup, which has been called the
best-prepared and best-executed of the 19 coups the country has endured since
1932, 13 of them successful.
“The junta's
restrictions on free speech affect very few so far,” a western observer told
Asia Sentinel in an email. “As always, my feeling of how this will pan out is
just that, a feeling based on my understanding of how Thais tend to think.
Unless the west imposes serious sanctions that start to hurt ordinary Thais'
ability to snap up the latest smart phones, they will obey the generals and
keep their political opinions to themselves.
"I've
never believed there was strong support for democracy here in principle, and
always believed Thaksin's success was based only on the abject failure of
previous regimes to pay any attention to the lower classes. I think people in
the North and Isaan [the northeast] have accepted the fact that no government
they elect will be allowed to stay in place, so there's no point in fighting.”
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